Estes Park Breaking News, Sports, Weather, Traffic

Nuggets' loss to Knicks biggest of the season

New York 117, Denver 90

NEW YORK — Before the game, Nuggets coach Brian Shaw bounced from locker to locker, asking each individual player the same question.

"You scared?"

There was humor contained within the query, but, yeah, he was kind of serious too. This was Madison Square Garden. You know, that Madison Square Garden. The one that makes legends — and mice — out of men.

Shaw wanted his team to relax and just play. So he joked and got his message across at the same time. But only barely. After a strong start, Shaw watched his players slowly shrink into those mice in a 117-90 defeat to the New York Knicks on Friday night.

It was the Nuggets' biggest loss of the season.

Defensively, the Nuggets crumbled. The night started with Carmelo Anthony scoring over any Nuggets defender who dared step in front of him. It continued when the Nuggets started turning the ball over by the boatload. They finished with 24 turnovers, which the Knicks turned into 27 points.

"That's basically it," Shaw said. "The last time I remember it being somewhat of a game ... I said to the team 'OK, they made a run, they made a couple of shots, lets finish the quarter out strong.' And we came out and proceeded to have five turnovers in a row to end the first half. That was pretty much the story of the game."

Advertisement

The knockout blow started with 4:14 left in the second quarter and didn't end until 6:29 of the third. In that stretch the Nuggets were outscored 30-10, and what had been a game in their control got quickly out of it. Anthony's 3-pointer midway through the third quarter gave the Knicks a 67-52 lead, and the Nuggets never recovered.

"As the game went on they made adjustments and kind of exploited us," forward Darrell Arthur said.

Denver Nuggets' Kenneth Faried (35) defends New York Knicks' Carmelo Anthony (7) during the first half of an NBA basketball game Friday, Feb. 7, 2014, in New York. (Frank Franklin II, AP)

Anthony breezed his way to 31 points in just three quarters of work, shooting 12-of-21 from the field. He didn't play in the fourth quarter.

And his teammates followed his hot shooting, nailing 56.5 percent of their shots as Nuggets defenders were either just a second too late on contesting a shot or completely not in the play when a Knicks big man rolled to the basket for a layup or a dunk.

Help defense was wishy-washy at best and even the Nuggets' security blanket — its strong initial defensive effort — was rarely there.

"On defense they just had us running," guard Ty Lawson said. "I felt like we were playing against the Spurs."

It was not the way the Nuggets wanted to start the four-game road trip and the first of a back-to-back that finishes Saturday against the Pistons in Auburn Hills, Mich. The only solace there is that the Pistons played Friday night as well, so both teams are on the back ends of back-to-back sets.

The Nuggets, who had a modest two-game winning streak snapped, were led by Lawson's 24 points and seven assists. He and Wilson Chandler (17 points, seven rebounds) were about the only Nuggets who could score regularly.

"It was a terrible game," Shaw said. "We have a game Saturday. We have to flush this one down the toilet and get ready for (Saturday's) game."

DENVER AT DETROIT

5:30 p.m. Saturday, ALT; 104.3 FM

Spotlight on Andre Drummond: Unless you're a hard-core NBA fan, you likely don't know much about Drummond. But over the next couple of seasons, he will become more of a household name. With an emphasis on "house." This guy is huge and hard to handle at age 20. At 6-foot-10 and 270 pounds, he had averages of 12.9 points, 12.8 rebounds, 1.9 blocked shots and 1.3 steals going into the Pistons' home game Friday against the Nets. And the UConn product is heating up too. In his previous four games, Drummond was shooting 76.5 percent from the field and averaging 15.5 points, 14.3 rebounds and 2.8 blocked shots.

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.